Michael Moore - Michael Moore Shuts Down Websites To Protest Against Anti-piracy Laws

The encyclopedia website is used by millions around the world on a daily basis, but it will 'go dark' for a full 24 hours as a demonstration against The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Sopa) laws being considered by America's Congress.

The proposals could see search engines and other content providers punished if pirated material is uploaded, and Fahrenheit 9/11 moviemaker Moore agrees the laws would censor the internet - so he is shutting down his websites as part of the protest.

In a statement, he writes, "My websites MichaelMoore.com and Mike's High School Newspaper will both be going dark for 24 hours starting at midnight tonight in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act now before Congress. I'm proud to join with Wikipedia... thousands of websites in this action to raise awareness of this huge threat to an open internet.

"I think we all knew that the powers-that-be would eventually try to kill the world wide web as we've come to know and love it. I'm sure it's just an accident that these bills are being proposed after a year where uprisings around the world were literally started on the internet. This is a scary device to those in power and I'm sure they rue the day they allowed us to talk freely to each other."